the implications of coteaching/cogenerative dialogue for teacher

Coteaching as evaluation methodology 1

Prepared for submission to the

Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education

The Implications of Coteaching/Cogenerative Dialogue

for Teacher Evaluation: Learning from Multiple Perspectives

of Everyday Practice

Wolff-Michael Roth

University of Victoria

Kenneth Tobin

University of Pennsylvania

All correspondence concerning this paper should be addressed to Wolff-Michael Roth,

Lansdowne Professor, Applied Cognitive Science, MacLaurin Building A548, University of

Victoria, PO Box 3100 STN CSC, Victoria, BC, Canada V8W 3N4.

E-mail: [email protected]. Tel: 1-250-721-7885. FAX: 1-250-721-7767.


The Implications of Coteaching/Cogenerative Dialogue

for Teacher Evaluation: Learning from Multiple Perspectives

of Everyday Practice

Abstract

In this article, personnel evaluation is reconceptualized in terms of coteaching, an

epistemology and methodology for teaching and learning to teach that is grounded in the

collective (societal) motivation of preparing the next generation of citizens. Coteaching

engages all participants (teachers, student teachers, supervisors, evaluators, and researchers)

in the effort of helping students to learn. Central to coteaching are cogenerative learning

sessions in which those who share a classroom experience (teachers and students)

collectively construct local theory with the intent of improving the learning of students.

Because our studies have been conducted in urban schools, in which often the least qualified

teachers end up teaching, our work is particularly relevant to improving teaching in these

most needy contexts.


Teaching is evaluated in numerous ways and, depending on the purposes of evaluation,

the validity of the performance measures on which decisions are made may be crucial to the

teacher and the institution in which the teacher practices. Cases in which valid measures are

essential include those in which legislatures and school systems have decided to assess

teaching for purposes such as earning tenure, promotion along a career ladder, merit pay,

and holding teachers accountable for pupil achievement. Teacher evaluation is also

important in teacher education. The field experience is a critical component of teacher

education programs and valid assessments are needed to guide decisions on whether

individuals can teach effectively and thereby earn a degree and certification to teach.

Accordingly, in inservice and preservice contexts there is a significant amount of teacher

assessment occurring and important decisions are made on the basis of the measures

obtained. We are therefore concerned with questions such as, Are measures of teaching

performance dependable for the purposes of their intended use? Are the data on the basis of

which decisions are made trustworthy, credible and dependable? Can the measures be used

to differentiate individuals for decision-making purposes? Can the performance of

individuals be dependably compared to given criteria and judged to have surpassed or fallen

short of given benchmarks? Issues such as these are at the heart of teacher evaluation.

Fundamental to all questions are epistemological and ontological issues about the nature of

teaching.

Whether an approach to teacher evaluation is considered viable depends to a significant

extent on how teaching is theorized. For example, if teaching is framed in terms of

Shulman’s tripartite system of content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and pedagogical

content knowledge then attention can be focused on assessing criteria associated with each

of these categories (Shulman, 1987). A significant part of such assessment systems uses

teachers’ oral and written rationales for their actions, rationales that are grounded in the

three categories. On the other hand, if teaching is regarded as a knowledge form that is only

evident in praxis, a form of teacher evaluation that focuses on teaching in specific contexts is


likely to be emphasized. In these circumstances, social theories that address the conscious

and unconscious dimensions of action, such as those of Bourdieu (1992) and Giddens

(1984), seem highly appropriate. Thus, speaking to teachers about what they do and why

they do what they do will not necessarily determine whether given actions were or were not

rational (Bourdieu, 1990). In addition, taking into account the social and cultural milieu in

which teaching occurs is easier to exhort than it is to accomplish. Can teaching performance

ever be considered independently of the social and cultural contexts in which curricula are

enacted and be considered independently of the evaluation process? In this paper we make

the case that teaching is a form of praxis that is always inextricably situated in some social

and cultural milieu. Thus, evaluations of teaching are always specific to time, place and the

particularities of context. In the following sections we explore a variety of issues associated

with teacher evaluation in which we coteach with practicing and new teachers1 in an urban

high school in the North East of the United States. Specifically we address coteaching and

cogenerative dialoguing as components of an approach to teacher evaluation that has

numerous potential applications to schools and the field experience components of teacher

education programs. Rather than making evaluation a process external to teaching, with its

tendencies to objectify teachers and teaching, coteaching/cogenerative dialoguing makes

evaluation part of the everyday work of teachers, students, and supervisors.

Core Issues

Today is my big day. Mr. Ernst, the person from the Ministry of Education who will

evaluate my teaching and determine whether or not I will receive my Ontario Teacher

Certification, is coming to my classroom. I am tense, thinking about whether the lesson I

have planned will meet the expectations of the evaluator. I hope that my students play the

1 We use the term ‘new teacher’ in preference to ‘student teacher’ or ‘prospective teacher’ because theselatter terms are inconsistent with coteaching, which is premised on the ideas that we learn to teach byteaching (as distinct from observing, studying or reflecting on teaching) and that learning to teach is acontinuous ‘becoming-in-the-classroom’.


game—I have prepared them in that I told them how important this visit is to my own

career.

During the lesson I do not teach in my normal way. Not only am I over-conscious

about what I am doing but I am also aware of my desire for Mr. Ernst to have a favorable

impression of my teaching. I planned an activity on the computer, where students can

explore the motion of physical objects by conducting their own experiments. Although I

would have done this activity anyway, I am concerned that Mr. Ernst will think I have

staged it for his benefit. In a sense the lesson is staged because I thought more than I

usually do about the activities, their legitimacy in terms of my epistemology, and the extent

of their fit with the provincial curriculum guidelines.

When students have problems understanding, or when they get stuck, I immediately

think about the effects of their learning difficulties on my evaluation. I am sweating, which I

never do while teaching—this event brings back memories of an unpleasant experience

when, in a similar evaluation in a different school and province a student publicly

announced my sweating and trembling to the class. ‘You’re sweating and shaking. Are you

scared because of the person watching you?’ Despite my tension and fears, the lesson

eventually comes to an end. I am relieved that the lesson is over, but I am still worried

about how Mr. Ernst has perceived what has happened and how the evaluation has come

out.

It turned out that Mr. Ernst had been very pleased and remarked to the school

administration that he had observed an exemplary teacher. Even though all of my teaching

evaluations have been positive in this way, and supported with commendations from my

various superintendents, my level of anxiety is high each time I am evaluated.

*

In this (autobiographical) account of personnel evaluation from the perspective of a

teacher, we notice several important aspects that frequently are not taken into account in the

supervision and evaluation of teachers. It is clear that the presence of an evaluator changes


the situation. No longer is the primary goal of teaching to afford student learning. Instead,

the principal goal is for the teacher to demonstrate effective teaching to an external evaluator

who is trained to decide what is and what is not effective teaching. Not surprisingly, many

teachers are uncomfortable with the idea that an outsider can validly assess the effectiveness

of their teaching in a classroom that is normally shared only by a teacher and the students.

In the context of such evaluations many teachers plan and enact special lessons contrived to

show their effectiveness on specified competencies, to teach in ways that are convincing to

an external evaluator. In such circumstances teaching often is enacted in ways that are

mostly deliberative and conscious and thereby markedly different than the teaching that

occurs normally.

From the teacher’s perspective the goal of the activity in the above vignette was to obtain

certification rather than to afford the learning of his students. The teacher enacts teaching to

demonstrate his effectiveness and an external evaluator comes to a decision by comparing

the narratives and scores constructed from the observation with some standard. In this way,

the decision is based on comparing one representation against another (sometimes non-

articulated theories of teaching competencies). In the construction of the data on which the

decision is based, a material record is constructed. This record stands for the individual

teacher and his actions. That is, the teacher becomes first objectified in the record of his

teaching effectiveness, on the basis of which a comparison is conducted with performance

standards or benchmarks, which then supports a decision of whether or not to certify. That

is, the decision to certify or not is abstracted from the individual subject and his teaching.

When evaluation involves teachers who are already tenured, a negative outcome may lead to

a recommendation for (compulsory) professional development and the teacher might be

denied privileges such as merit pay or promotion. Prescribed “professional development”

usually is to be achieved in terms of taking further course work, by working with a coach,

etc. Teachers are constructed in terms of deficits, to be overcome through additional

professional education that frequently is disconnected from the praxis of teaching. It is a


rare event for professional development activities to be situated in the classes in which

teaching and learning are regularly enacted.

In this article we describe a radically different approach to the evaluation of teaching.

Through coteaching we are able to merge the usually separate activities of professional

development, supervision, evaluation, and research. In coteaching, several, traditionally

differently located individuals (teachers, cooperating teachers, new teachers, supervisors,

evaluators, and researchers) coparticipate as teachers. Shared experiences are evaluated

through cogenerative dialogue in which the coparticipants (including students) reflect on the

teaching-learning activities. Within a context that is shaped to promote learning, the focus is

not on the performance of only one teacher but on the performance of all coparticipants.

Accordingly, coteaching constitutes a change in the unit of analysis of teaching, which we

study in terms of all the elements that are considered in an activity system. From the

perspective of activity theory the following elements are salient to teacher evaluation:

teaching, teachers and students (subjects), reproduction of society as the motivation of the

activity, tools (such as pedagogy, curriculum, material resources), community, rules of

interaction in classrooms and schools, and the division of labor (different roles of the

individuals involved in schools).

Activity Theory

Many social theories, such as functionalism (e.g., Colomy, 1998), ignore the

significance of human agency in framing what happens in institutions such as schools.

Social forces are regarded as shaping the actions of individuals who enact roles according to

social structures that persist over time. Approaches such as these have been criticized

because they tend to ignore or downplay the contributions that human agents make to

constructing and structuring their environments (Holzkamp, 1983; Lave, 1988). That is,

human agents are not merely subject to social structures but they actively contribute to their

existence (Bourdieu, 1997). Activity theory addresses both the context and agency of


individuals and explicitly assumes that humans are agents of change who act to co-create

their (learning) environments and the associated social structures. Human subjects are

regarded as active creators of their environments rather than as passive reactants to social

forces that predispose them to act in predetermined ways (i.e., as cultural dopes).

Activity theory takes into account the context in which subject-object relations occur

(Leont’ev, 1978). Because the subject-object relationship is the primary concern in an

activity it is necessary to consider at the same time the effects on the subject-object

relationship of the co-mediational relationships involving tools, community, rules, and

division of labor (Engeström, 1987). For example, if the student is the subject and learning

science is the object then the salient tools that mediate the activity, might be communication,

pedagogy and curriculum. These tools are not independent entities but are shaped by social

and cultural factors that characterize a community (e.g., school or classroom) such as its

rules and the roles of participants. In learning activities, these elements and the mediated

relations in which they are situated constitute the environment. That is, activity theory

simultaneously and dialectically articulates the human subject, the environment, and the

(mutually constitutive) relations between both.

In our approach to understanding classroom events we take a decentered view of

teaching by assuming that students are the primary subjects of the activity (Lave, 1996).

Their primary object is (an aspect of) the world; the purpose of teaching is to assist students

to change their relations to the world and thereby to provide them with an increased potential

to act (Lave, 1993), which is the outcome of the activity. In this process, tools, including

pedagogy and subject matter language, mediate the students’ relations to the primary object

(i.e., world). That is, the relation between the subject and object is mediated rather than

being of immediate nature. What makes activity theory less reductive is that subject, object,

and tools also are involved in other mediated relations. For example, the society

(community) mediates the relationship between student (subject) and pedagogy (tool); that

is, because tools have cultural-historical origins, the activity of teaching and the associated


environments are connected to and are mediated by factors from within and outside of the

schools. In this decentered view, teaching and learning become matters of collective

responsibility.

From the perspective of activity theory, the object motivates the activity (here learning);

this motivation arises from the intentions of the subject (here, the student), which are

mediated by the intentions of the community (here represented by the teachers). Learning

therefore becomes a collective responsibility rather than an individual responsibility. The

facilitation of learning is the responsibility of all members in the community, students and

teachers alike (including new teachers, evaluators, and supervisors). Furthermore, the

identification of contradictions that impede learning, that is, evaluation, also is the

responsibility of the collective as is the subsequent removal of the contradictions that we

identified.

Activity Theory and Traditional Personnel Evaluation

In the previous section, we introduced activity theory, which describes human activities

in terms of sets of mediated relations each constituted by a triad of entities. However, the

salient elements accounted for in activity theory and the ensemble of mediated relations are

not the only characteristic features of an activity system. In each activity system, there are

also contradictions that constitute primary forces that can catalyze change in the system as

participants attempt to remove them (Engeström, 1994). In addition, participants may

internalize systemic contradictions and adapt their actions to work around them. For

example, a teacher may deal with the contradiction of having to perform for an evaluator by

setting aside his concerns for student learning and switch instead to a demonstration of

teaching competencies that are likely to appeal to the evaluator or that are included in an

assessment protocol. In so doing he can be regarded as working around contradictions by

staging an event that looks like authentic teaching but which is focused more on teaching

performance than the learning of students. Systemic contradictions also may be internalized


and thereby personalized, leading to stress and more serious psychological disorders (e.g.,

Dreier, 1993). While teaching in urban schools, for example, teachers often will work

around a persistent problem of inattentive and disruptive students, focusing not on

controlling disruptive students but on mediating the learning of those who want to learn. In

this case the work around involves tolerating known inadequacies with the interests in mind

of those who want to learn (in a manner that is analogous to one of our student’s advice to

teach only those who want to learn [Tobin, Seiler, & Walls, 1999]). Work-around strategies

such as these can be stressful and lead to burnout and even withdrawal from the teaching

profession. In other school-related examples teachers can assume responsibility for

deficiencies in the system. For example, to overcome shortages of material resources

teachers might purchase equipment and supplies out of their own pockets.

As the introductory vignette shows, teachers often experience supervision and evaluation

as stress. From the perspective of activity theory, evaluation often involves an outsider

applying a set of culturally and historically developed criteria during an arranged

observation of teaching. The evaluation usually incorporates additional “anecdotal”

information together with artifacts provided by the teacher and/or other stakeholders. For

example, a teacher may provide as evidence of the effectiveness a videotape that shows

teaching in different contexts, a reflective journal that includes evidence of reflective

practices, and a portfolio containing artifacts of work selected to show the achievement of

students. Similarly, a school administrator might submit written records of formal

evaluations undertaken in the past semester and a summary of the results of a survey of

students’ perceptions of their learning environment. These artifacts, which can be weighed

to inform a final decision, reflect implicit and non-articulated theories and assumptions.

Equipped with a variety of data, the evaluator examines various aspects of classroom life and

compares the performance of teaching to established benchmarks. In this way, the entities

and mediated relations of the learning activity system are objectified in and through

representations (e.g., scores based on comparisons with benchmarks on an evaluation form


and/or a narrative account of teaching) that then can be used to support an evaluation. That

is, a complex system of activity and contexts is reduced to a set of attributes that represent

the quality of teaching in ways regarded as objective. The process of evaluation leads to the

production of records that stand for teaching performance. Invariably these records are “de-

subjectified” (e.g., Dreier, 1991) or “de-populated” (Billing, 1994), that is, the subjectivity

that constitutes human experience has been abstracted. In this way the evaluation process

objectifies the teacher, who is (socially) constructed as “competent,” “in need of

professional development,” or “ineffective.” Mehan (1993) shows that evaluations in

which the voices of those most concerned are not included in equitable ways can lead to

negative objectified (social) attributions and inequities for some of the individuals being

evaluated. Mehan illustrates that inequities emanate from hierarchical relations, both existing

and enacted, between participants and the socially mediated legitimacy of their knowledge.

Some of the contradictions of teaching arise from processes of evaluation. Given the

stakes involved, a teacher to be evaluated puts on a performance, a staged event that is not

authentic because of the presence of an outside evaluator and a manner of teaching that is

more conscious than normally is the case. In some cases this might be associated with

deception and resistance, actions that are typical of hierarchical relationships and teachers’

feelings of powerlessness. An example of this would be a teacher staging an inquiry lab

activity when the usual approach involved the students completing activities from a textbook,

or in the case of elementary teachers, a history of not teaching science at all (McGonigal,

1999; Roth, Tobin & Ritchie, in press). Teachers can experience negative emotions

associated with contradictions related to hierarchical power relationships between teacher

and evaluator and of being constructed without a meaningful and sufficient voice. Evaluation

and the hierarchical relations in the school and school system, which have an effect on the

employment status of the teacher, are contradictions that might be internalized by teachers as

disaffection and isolation. What can be done where such contradictions exist to alleviate

disaffection and stress? Is it possible to create an authentic system of evaluation in which


teachers have a meaningful voice in evaluations of their own performance and that consider

the sociocultural contexts in which teaching and learning occur?

Critical psychologists, whose theoretical foundations lie in activity theory (Leont’ev,

1978), suggest that it is not sufficient to deal with contradictions at a personal level

(Holzkamp, 1983). Rather, participants have to recognize contradictions as emanating from

sociocultural conditions that have to be removed in a collective manner so that participants

can experience life as subjective, satisfying, and free of fear (Holzkamp, 1984). In order to

achieve this, evaluation necessarily requires a methodology in which all stakeholders (i.e.,

teacher, students and evaluator) pursue and fulfill common interests. If evaluations are

undertaken by external evaluators their experiences of teaching and learning are radically

vicarious since evaluation from the side provides no direct access to the action possibilities

available in the unfolding moments that comprise teaching and learning (Holzkamp, 1992).

Instead of experiencing first-hand the real possibilities for enhancing student learning,

evaluators must infer what might have been done and how learning may or may not have

been shaped by what was or was not done by a teacher or students.

When it is conducted in this way evaluation is an activity that involves judgments from

the side using criteria considered salient (by the evaluator) in the setting. Even though

evaluators may be secure in their knowledge, we regard this as false security. How can it be

known that particular teacher actions will produce postulated social outcomes? Or, how can

evaluators know if actions they recommend teachers undertake are feasible in the unfolding

circumstances of praxis? Even in the best of circumstances the recommendations of

outsiders can only be regarded as possible narratives for what might have occurred or what

might be desirable. Even though evaluators’ renditions take into account their knowledge

and expertise they include only distant and vicarious experiences of the teaching and

learning that are the objects of the evaluation. We maintain that an alternative way of

evaluating teaching is likely to be more productive than the traditional “outsider” approach

that is so common. Not only does our alternative approach involve insider perspectives but


also the focus of an evaluation shifts from an individual to a group of coparticipants. In our

approach one individual would no longer bear the brunt of performance evaluation. Instead,

the process would involve cogenerative dialoguing of the experiences shared during

coteaching. These conversations are necessarily grounded in what is experienced and

thereby they incorporate participants’ experiences of salient sociocultural factors including

(but not limited to) the interchanges of the social and cultural capital of teachers and

students.

For nearly a decade we have studied teaching, learning to teach, research, supervision,

and evaluation as unified activities. In the following sections we articulate the context of our

research and what we have learned from the research about evaluation of teaching.

Research Context

Our research on coteaching was conducted in two schools on the Canadian West Coast

(7 cotaught science units) and in two urban schools in Philadelphia. The present case study

was taken from our work at City High School (pseudonym). City High School (CHS) is a

placement school for students at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) enrolled in a

graduate-degree leading to teacher certification (i.e., new teachers). We are now in our third

year of conducting ethnographic research on the changes in teaching and learning to teach.

As part of the research, we changed our roles from outside observers to active participants in

teacher preparation and teaching in the public schools (to be more described below). Our

current research model is coteaching/cogenerative dialoguing, a form of participatory action

research (e.g., Eldon & Levin, 1991), particularly close to those forms of research that pair

research and activism (e.g., Cole, 1991; Nissen, 1998).

Kenneth Tobin is a professor in teacher education at Penn and has been coteaching on a

regular basis at City High School with resident teachers and the Penn interns. He is a

participant who engages in research to transform the different lifeworlds that he shares with

students, teachers, student teachers, and colleagues. As a result of his work, the conditions


of learning change in the school and at the university. At the time of the study, Stephanie

was enrolled in the teacher education program at Penn. She and a peer cotaught with Bert, a

resident cooperating teacher with previous coteaching experience. Michael Roth was a

visiting researcher with several years of prior coteaching experience who cotaught with

Tobin in different classes at CHS.

City High School is attended by more than 2,000 students mainly from African

American, poverty-stricken or working-class families. The school is organized into small

learning communities (SLCs), schools within the school, each containing about 200

students and organized around a different core idea (e.g., health, performing arts, or science

and technology). The curriculum is often enacted at a minimal attainment level, students

rarely engage appropriately in activities, equipment, supplies and textbooks are in short

supply, and there appears to be a lack of motivation on the part of either teachers or students

to pursue deep learning goals (Tobin, Seiler & Walls, 1999). Conversations with teachers

reveal that they often place the blame for this state of affairs with the students and the

situations in which they live. Teachers also note a lack of commitment from the school

district and a system that permits urban schools to be funded at a level far below that of

suburban schools. In a striking contrast the students often place the blame for the

inadequate curriculum squarely with teachers and administrators who maintain a curriculum

perceived by many students to be a complete waste of their time.

As part of our research, we draw on a variety of qualitative research methods appropriate

in school contexts, including ethnography, discourse analysis, and micro-analytic

approaches to studying situated cognition. In addition to the usual observational,

methodological, and theoretical fieldnotes we videotape lessons and cogenerative dialogue

sessions, interview students and (new) teachers, audio-tape interviews conducted by high

school student research assistants among their peers, and collect the teaching-related

discussions new teachers held using an online internet forum.


To construct meaning, we enact a dialectic process consisting of two movements:

understanding and explanation. Immediate understanding of the praxis situation is primary

and constitutes the necessary prerequisite of any other form of understanding (e.g., theory)

(Ricœur, 1991). However, this primary understanding has to be expanded through a second,

explanation-seeking (critical) hermeneutic analysis lest we are to remain ideologically stuck.

It is only through explanations that we can identify and seek to resolve the structural

contradictions that are of a societal nature (Holzkamp, 1991). This movement from primary

to theoretical understanding begins during cogenerative dialogue sessions and is often

continued during face-to-face meetings or email exchanges among participants.

Coteaching as Epistemology and Method

In the model of coteaching, learning is explicitly made the primary goal of the activity.

Two or more teachers teach at one another’s elbow in order to facilitate student learning

(Roth, 1998). They take collective responsibility by teaching together, at the same time,

rather than dividing up tasks to be done independently as frequently occurs when one

elementary teacher teaches social studies simultaneously to two classes and her partner, in

turn, does the mathematics classes. As the events of the classroom unfold there are more

teachers to deal with them in ways that afford the learning of students. Our research

conducted in and as part of teaching praxis evidences significant learning of all participants

including teachers, evaluators, and researcher-teachers. Interestingly enough, this learning

often occurs in unconscious ways and teachers realize only much later what and how much

they have learned while working together with one or more colleagues. Also, it is possible

that most of what is learned remains beyond consciousness (Bourdieu, 1997; Dewey, 1933;

Giddens, 1984; Lakoff & Johnson, 2000).

Coparticipation is the fundamental condition for research, supervision, evaluation, and

learning to become a teacher. All individuals—new teacher, (regular, cooperating) teacher,

researcher, supervisor, or evaluator—participate in teaching so that they share symmetrical


mediating relations between students and their knowledgeability. That is, as a teacher

collective, we do not condone the involvement of individuals who construct themselves as

outside observers looking at teaching and learning rather than participating in it. Praxis has

its own constraints; most importantly, praxis unfolds in time and therefore has local

coherence whereas evaluation from the outside seeks global coherence, which is nearly

always irrelevant for practical action. There is no time out for practitioners, forcing them to

enact their knowledgeability rather than standing back, as theorists and outside evaluators

are able to do, to consider and elaborate all (theoretically) possible forms of action (e.g.,

Bourdieu, 1990; Roth, Lawless, & Tobin, in press). These constraints of the temporality of

praxis and the praxis-related limitations in an agent’s room to maneuver are available only

to coparticipants in praxis. As teaching, evaluation becomes our collective responsibility,

conducted by those who have an insider view on the events to be evaluated.

Coteaching experiences are coordinated with meetings during which coteachers and

students debrief, make sense of the events, evaluate what has happened, critically reflect on

their understanding, and construct local theory and new action possibilities. We call this

activity cogenerative dialoguing, for all participants have equal opportunities to contribute to

the construction of evaluation and theory. In our earlier form of coteaching, the teachers

involved met later in the day (after class, during recess, after lunch, at the end of the school

day) to debrief the shared experiences. In our recent work, (ideally two) students also

participate in these meetings to make sense, understand what has happened, and construct

generalizations and expand action possibilities (e.g., Tobin, Roth, & Zimmermann, in press).

Coteaching is based on an equitable approach to teaching, and in articulating differences

between teachers in terms of their different life histories and experiences. The meetings are

also based on a strongly participatory approach, in which all participants, including students

have opportunities to make sense, contribute to the interaction, ask questions, articulate

issues, and so forth. In order to guide our meetings, interactions, and types of issues to be

addressed, we developed a heuristic (Table 1) that is made available to all participants in


cogenerative dialoguing so that they can orient their own actions in appropriate ways. For

example, when we first presented our heuristic, a student who had previously participated in

cogenerative dialoguing noted that she had pretty much participated as the heuristic

indicated (#4). However, she also noted that she had never “posed critical questions” (Item

#4.4) herself. She used her newly acquired awareness to participate in new ways, that is, by

asking critical questions herself.

]]]]]]]]]] Insert Table 1 about here [[[[[[[[[[

This approach necessitates new ways in which traditional roles of new teacher,

(cooperating, regular) teacher, supervisor, researcher, and evaluator are understood and

enacted. Because the approach is symmetrical in the classroom, traditional forms of critique

by one individual (e.g., supervisor) of another individual (e.g., new teacher) lose legitimacy.

For example, in a traditional situation a supervising university professor might admonish the

new (“student”) teacher for not having attended to sleeping students or for having wasted

time in a transition from one activity to another. In coteaching, if the supervisor/evaluator

observes a sleeping student or notices that the transition wastes valuable learning time, he is

obliged (an obligation that is shared and therefore socially mediated within the coteaching

group) to act. This does not prevent him from raising the issue during a subsequent

meeting.

Our description so far has shown that all individuals participate in teaching and learning;

in our original research on coteaching, no fly-on-the-wall observers were allowed to

participate. This methodology harbors dangers in that existing understandings could be

reified and thereby become ideology. That is, when we use only immediate descriptions of

the context, we are likely to remain stuck and reproduce ways of perceiving and acting in a

particular context. So, while we need our immediate experience in terms of the concepts that

correspond to them, we also need to engage in a critical analysis to come to an

understanding that makes salient the fundamental structures of the condition that we are

finding ourselves in. This critical analysis requires our personal understanding of praxis but


also a “radical doubt” (Bourdieu, 1992) or “suspicion of ideology” (Markard, 1993) to

overcome the possibility that we remain ideologically stuck in our current understanding.

Teaching and Evaluation as Praxis

We begin by presenting sample classroom events from our coteaching experience and

excerpts from the subsequent cogenerative dialoguing session where we talked about what

has happened. We then use a metalogue—which is reflexive of the way we made sense in

the research—to elaborate what we can learn from the coteaching and cogenerative

dialoguing episodes.

Coteaching

Episode 1

The new teacher Stephanie had planned two activities on scientific method, a core area

for the citywide standards and an associated standardized test, for this 90-minute lesson.

However, as the first lesson unfolded, Stephanie noted that students, in order to draw

maximum benefit for their learning, required more time than she had planned. When the

activity was finally completed, Stephanie realized that there was not enough time left in the

period for students to complete the second activity. She and her supervising teacher (Bert)

decided that they would first review what they had done so far in genetics. As she prepared

the overhead projector she realized that she had used up the only available transparency

earlier in the day and therefore sent a student to get it cleaned. There is a long moment of

inactivity; “nothing” appears to happen. The videotape shows Stephanie walking to the

door, as if looking for the student who had left the classroom. Ken (Stephanie’s teaching

methods professor), sitting among the students, drums his fingers on the desk and suggests

to Stephanie that she might quicken the pace of the transition. He then encourages the

participation of Keesha who has her head down on the desk. Soon after a student returns

with a clean transparency sheet and Stephanie begins the review of Mendelian genetics.

Episode 2


In this second episode, we are in the middle of the review of Mendelian genetics.

Stephanie writes pairs of letters on the transparency and asks students to name

(scientifically) various gene combinations that she writes down as ‘BB,’ ‘Bb,’ and ‘bb.’

Stephanie then asks Keesha to demonstrate what characteristics an offspring would have

based on a given gene combination of the parents.

Stephanie: Excellent, little ‘b’, little ‘b’, so we got homozygous recessive (makes a note

on the acetate). And what is the last condition?

Several students: Heterozygous. Little ‘b’, big ‘B’…

Stephanie: Heterozygous, awesome. Homozygous recessive means that there are two

recessive genes. Keesha, come around.

Bert: A good way of remembering this… someone just said phenotype, genotype, and

you gave the correct answer. An easy way of remembering this is…. Just think of the first

letter. A ‘p’ for physical expression, for physical appearance. A ‘g’ for the genes. So if you

ever get confused, genes, genotype, physical expression, phenotype

Stephanie: (Keesha has arrived at the overhead projector.) All right, Keesha is going to

put this on the overhead for us.

As Keesha has to walk a considerable distance to get to the front to construct the

Punnett Square, there might have been a lengthy transition. Bert anticipates and uses the

time taken for Keesha to walk to the front as a “teachable moment” and volunteers

information that will assist students to remember how to relate the scientific terms of

“phenotype” and “genotype” to their more familiar language. Bert, in effect, builds a

bridge between two forms of language, one that students bring to class and another that is

appropriate in the context of formal science. At the same time, his intervention effectively

uses time that otherwise might have simply been transitional time.

Episode 3

Stephanie completes her review and seems ready to enact a transition to the next part of

the lesson. Michael raises his hand as a sign that he wants to contribute to the ongoing


lesson. Stephanie provides the space him to coparticipate and engage students in a

conversation about a real-life genetics problem.

Michael: I wonder if anyone can figure out a little bit about my family? So, I have blue

eyes and my wife has blue eyes. I was wondering whether you can figure out, what color

my son’s eyes are?

Natasia: Blue eyes.

Michael: Why would they be blue?

Natasia: You have blue eyes, she has blue eyes…

Stephanie: This is a good question.

Natasia: She has blue eyes and you have blue eyes, you all must have recessive genes.

Stephanie: OK, let’s think about that (begins to write). Let’s list the possible…

Natasia: Make them have all the different combinations…

Stephanie: Excellent, excellent. A good point. (Turns to Michael) I am glad you brought

that up. Natasia has a good point. Let’s list all the possible genotypes. OK. He has blue

eyes. Question. So phenotype is blue? So what are the possible genotypes he may have?

*

Voice over (Michael): Earlier in the lesson I attempted to help a student in the other half

of the class working out a genetics problem. I was not successful for she did not understand

me. I thought her failure to understand was partly because she was not used to me and did

not construct me as a teacher. But I waited to see what Bert would do and to learn how to

teach students like these. He began to talk to her using words such as ‘heterozygous

dominant’ and ‘homozygous dominant’. She stopped him saying, ‘Why you giving me big

talk with words that I don’t understand?’ So I realized that students might find it difficult to

relate to the topic and I wanted to provide a very practical example. This example and the

one I provided right after, which introduced a quite different perspective, seemed necessary

to make the lesson more concrete and palpable to students. Rather than waiting until I could

talk to her about being too abstract and about using more practical examples, I enacted such


an example right then and there, when it was most appropriate. My strategy appeared to

payoff because Stephanie later used an example from her own family modeled on my

contribution. She appeared to have learned and in the same lesson enacted a relevant

practical example from her own family.

*

Episodes 2 and 3 are common to our work in the sense that rather than sitting in the

back of the classroom, constructing an evaluation that they subsequently give to Stephanie

and then use to evaluate her teaching, coteachers (Bert and Michael) move in and teach.

Rather than admonishing Stephanie later for a long transition, Bert sets an example of how

periods of transition can be transformed into moments for additional teaching and learning.

Rather than admonishing Stephanie for not having made the lesson more concrete, Michael

requests a turn and enacts a whole-class conversation around a concrete genetics problem.

In contrast, episode 1 is exceptional in the sense that Ken experiences a long transition but

does little to use the time more productively. Instead he exhorts Stephanie to quicken her

pace of teaching. This is one of those moments that are indicative that we are still in a mode

of changing and adjusting to a different way of evaluating and researching teaching.

Cogenerative Dialoguing

Case 1: Transitions

During cogenerative dialoguing, where we make sense of the lesson that we had

experienced together, Ken raises the issue of the long transition from the first activity to the

moment when Stephanie finally begins the lesson. He asks whether Stephanie had

overheard his comment. With Stephanie’s response, the topic of transition became the topic

of the conversation. Stephanie accepts the responsibility for the delay.

Ken: What did I say?

Stephanie: ‘I am falling asleep. Keep going’


Ken: That’s right, I said, ‘come on, come on, come on, you are driving me nuts. If I

were a student in this class, I would be falling asleep.’ How can you work your way

through periods like that? I know you had plan A, which was to do whatever. And you

didn’t have time left to do plan A, … and so you had to switch to plan B, but the transition

was…

Stephanie: Right, it was long…

Ken: It was really long. And I was next door to someone who was battling... Maybe she

is one of those who go to sleep in every period. Who knows? But she was battling to show

any interest at all. So what she needed, I would say, is a fire lit under her. How could we

have...? I mean, I don’t have any answer... but we didn’t need a long transition there... you

were between activities and had to wash the transparencies...

Stephanie: Well that was the problem. I mean the problem was, I had to decide. Like I

had planned that we make mobiles and stuff, with the scientific method. And I realized that

there would not be enough time. And I had all that stuff laid out. So I thought we could get

into genetics and do a dihybrid cross. And a student had written all over the acetate, as they

were supposed to, and we had to wash them all off.

Ken: That’s good, but... so? It was down time...

Stephanie: Maybe get a discussion going, like have a question or something like that...

Natasia: Sometimes she lets us... just to sit and relax for a few minutes. But you can’t,

like sometimes it is too long, and like...

Case 2: Real-life Contexts

In this episode Natasia raises the issue that her interests are not being met in opposition

to the claim made by Bert that he focuses on students’ interests. However, there appears to

be a deeper concern about the relevance of the subject matter to real life situations. In the

following excerpt from the cogenerative dialogue Natasia makes an important contribution

to the evaluation of the learning environment.


Bert: With the students in the class, I have always had a good relationship in terms of

maybe what they like to see taught, or techniques, you know, or what their interests are, so

you always have that openness.

Natasia: My interests are not met!

Michael: What is that?

Natasia: The zoo. Right? Because you can actually do DNA research in the zoo.

Stephanie: She is dying to go to the zoo. She is talking about it every day.

Natasia: I do. I really do.

Ken: There is the new primate exhibition.

Natasia: Yeah, and you could like, multi-colored, like the hair color of the monkeys. This

is stuff like DNA, right?

Stephanie: Doing crosses and things like that.

Natasia: So I always thought we could make a trip to the zoo. Right?

Natasia makes more than the claim that her needs are not being met. She provides a

practical example of the zoo as a site where the current curricular topic genetics could be

contextualized. She elaborates this issue after Ken mentions the primate exhibition that was

recently established. Natasia suggests that they could investigate monkey hair color, which

is a function of inheritance and DNA.

This episode is interesting from the perspective of the relations that are enacted in

cogenerative dialogue sessions. Traditionally hierarchical relations, here between a student

and her teachers, are flattened in the sense that Natasia can provide constructive criticism

without fear of reprisals. Her claim contradicts her teacher’s perception that he is in tune

with and meets students’ interests. Unusual for our common practice (a “negative case”

[Guba & Lincoln, 1989] so to speak) is the fact that Stephanie ends up taking the blame for

the long transition. Ken raises the issue and tacitly makes Stephanie responsible for the

long transition. Michael and Bert are complicit in not mediating the conversation and

helping to construct the long transition as a matter of collective responsibility.


Metalogue 12

Michael: Episode 1 is really quite unusual for our research and our commitment to the

principle “don’t blame others if you don’t or can’t take care of the situation yourself.” But

the issue then came up in our cogenerative dialoguing. This episode really stands in contrast

to the other two episodes that are characteristic of what we do. If we notice something that

can be improved in the lesson, one of us will immediately attempt to make this improvement.

Thus, in Episode 2 Bert makes use of a transition to provide students with a mnemonic that

can help them to remember the words “phenotype” and “genotype.” In Episode 3, I

contribute an everyday example in which the somewhat abstract talk about “little and big

Bs,” “homozygous” and “heterozygous” individuals, and “genotype and phenotype

expressions” is brought to a concrete (because familiar) level. Both are examples of

situations where we take collective responsibility and, in this, promote the learning of

students and coteachers alike.

Ken: I can see where you are going with your argument and I agree that my actions in

the classroom and the cogenerative dialogue are probably a throw back to earlier times and

roles. I appear to have enacted my role habitually without being conscious of what I was

doing. A critical issue in coteaching sessions is to deal with the events as they unfold in real

time. These classes are so event full that it is not possible to be everywhere at once and

resolve all issues of which you are conscious. We pitch in when and as we can with the goal

of improving the learning of students. My habitus of being an evaluator “from the side”

seems to have overridden my goal to coteach and assume collective responsibility for what

happens. During the cogenerative dialoguing we all should feel comfortable in raising

issues of which we are aware. This is not an occasion for self-congratulatory remarks, but

an opportunity to learn from our discussions of shared experiences.

2 According to Bateson (1972), metalogues are conversations in which previous texts and dialogues arebrought to a new more general level by abstracting themes from previous accomplishments. Metalogues arereflexive of the dialogic manner in which we make sense as researchers and evaluators.


Michael: When the long transition came up, your critique and our reactions did not

contribute to make us collectively responsible. Stephanie was in a defensive mode; Bert and

I did not contribute and thereby allowed the failure to be attributed to her. Natasia

contributed interesting insights of what can be done or that a long transition can give

students a needed rest. But these comments did not redistribute the responsibility for the

long transition. Really it should have been a critique of our collective teaching rather than

just Stephanie, for we were all responsible. In the other episode from our cogenerative

dialoguing session, Natasia articulated a need that was not being met in this classroom. She

thereby contributed to evaluation of teaching, and thereby enacted her part of a collective

responsibility for learning and teaching.

Ken: That is a good point. I cannot say for sure why I raised the issue of transition to

begin the cogenerative discussion. But wasting time is a pervasive problem in the school.

Most new teachers and experienced teachers have problems in teaching an entire 90-minute

period. Typically we start late, finish early and in every transition students exhibit what I

describe as the “urban shuffle.” Transitions and activities take about three times as long as

I believe they should. During these long transitions particular students are bricoleurs and

use the time to pursue some of their own goals. Some lose interest and others put their

heads down as happened in this class. So, the length of transitions is an issue of which I am

conscious and concerned. I would like all teachers and students to work together to

extinguish the urban shuffle.

There is also an issue of Stephanie’s degree of comfort of coteaching with me. Until

today, Stephanie was not happily participating in coteaching. Prior to today Stephanie

looked somewhat exasperated when one of us stepped forward to coteach. I had spoken to

her about it and she understood the desirability of providing coparticipants the space to get

involved. I guess I was sensitive to her previous reticence and opted not to enact another

activity while the transparency was being cleaned. I did attend to Keesha who had her head

down but did not initiate a short activity as Bert did in the other case.


I think the best way to go into cogenerative dialoguing is with a conviction that any issue

can be set on the table without judging or assigning blame. I do believe in your point about

collective action and collective responsibility. During the lesson and the cognerative

discussion I was not conscious of this aspect of my role. I am only too aware that I have

long transitions when I am the lead teacher and the urban shuffle is characteristic of all

classes in the building. Bert too experiences this problem. By raising it I put it on the table

for discussion and reflection. I expect it to come up again and again. It is not essential that

we deal with each issue fully on the same day that it is introduced. It would be most

unfortunate if Stephanie were to feel diminished by me raising the issue and suggesting the

long transition was her fault alone.

Michael: I think that we can take this case to yet another level and frame the situation in

terms of the larger activity system and the relations that mediate the classroom events that

we experienced. That is, we can come to understand that event as the result of a structural

contradiction that was personalized and attributed to Stephanie. In a traditional evaluation

model, she might have been blamed (made responsible) for the long transition period. It is

not surprising, then, that Stephanie framed the problem in terms of the transparencies that

had been used previously and now needed cleaning. This is a framing in terms of immediate

understandings. However, we need to step back and realize that insufficient numbers of

transparencies (or lack of an acetate roll...) really is a structural problem, one that arises

from inadequate funding for urban schools. That is, we need to expand the notion of

collective responsibility to include those individuals, such as principals and superintendents,

who can assist in bringing about necessary structural changes. What we need to do at this

point is to ratchet up the analysis and look at the problems not in terms of our own

deficiencies, but as larger structural problems. Now, what are our options in this situation?

How can we transform the structures in order to have access to sufficient resources so that

the particular problems are not internalized (e.g., teachers having to buy these resources out

of their own pockets, or internalizing the contradiction in terms of stress, etc).


Ken: Your points about institutional and structural constraints are of significance to

teacher evaluation. Stephanie (and we) had to contend with a cascade of events that led to a

long transition. Social and cultural factors contributed to the lesson unfolding as it did. For

example, the nature of participation is a reflection of the students doing what they are able to

do and needing scaffolds to do some things that we want them to do. How can we assist

students to build a sense of urgency into their participation? I do not see students being

impatient because there is insufficient time to get done all that they want to do in 90

minutes. Instead I see even the best of students shuffling through the activities. What is

needed to sustain an inquiry-oriented learning environment is probably much the same in

suburban and urban schools. However, for the most part the teachers are from the middle

class and know how to provide appropriate scaffolds for students from social backgrounds

that are similar to their own. I think we all need to focus on how to recognize the social and

cultural capital that our students possess, such that we can provide appropriate scaffolds to

enable them to approach learning in a more energetic and sustained way. As we discuss

elsewhere, Stephanie is much better able now to enact science curricula that take account of

the dispositions of our students (Tobin, Roth, & Zimmermann, in press). Even so, there is

more to be done and the enacted curriculum supports minimal levels of learning for most

students.

Michael: With our changed approach, evaluation really comes to focus on student

learning rather than on teacher performance; evaluation also becomes a collective

responsibility of the participants rather than of one designated individual. An evaluation will

be largely positive when the participants have both the sense and evidence that learning is

fostered whereas it would be negative if the needs of students are not met. However, because

these cogenerative dialogue sessions are built into coteaching, change and ongoing

improvements are built into the activity system by design. We do not need the anxiety-

ridden situation where external evaluators come into a classroom but rather have evaluation

as part of the process, conducted by the stakeholders themselves. We may now think of


evaluators in terms of their mediational roles for increasing the learning potential of teacher-

student collectivities from the inside.

Ken: As we enact cogenerative dialogue there is a tacit agreement to honor each

person’s voice and endeavor to learn from what is said. There is an acknowledgement that

the purpose of the dialogue is to assist us all to learn better how to teach students like these

students in this classroom (and those participating in the cogenerative dialogue). The basis

for successful cogenerative dialogue is mutual respect and rapport among the coparticipants.

The explicit goal is to learn to teach in a particularized way through coparticipation in

conversations over shared experiences.

Metalogue 2: Coteaching and Teacher Evaluation

Michael: Some years ago, a chapter in the Review of Research in Education suggested

that the “social relationships of education—the relationships between administrators and

teachers, teachers and students, students and students, students and their work—replicate the

hierarchical divisions of labor.”3 I think that coteaching significantly changes these

relations. With the leveling of the relation between (new) teacher and supervisor, coop

teacher and evaluator, previously existing hierarchical relationships are undermined and re-

enacted in the form of cooperation in the service of a (societal) motive: assisting students in

their learning. While teacher-student relationships do not have to be inherently

asymmetrical, it still is perceived and enacted in this manner even in our coteaching

classroom. However, we are taking steps to overcome this contradiction by including

students in cogenerative dialogue to construct local theory (praxeology).

Ken: Eli Anderson4 speaks about the currency of the streets being respect. In this

school it is important to know this. If teachers do not show respect for students and expect

respect from them (by earning it through their actions) then it can be very difficult to teach

3 Pinar & Bowers, 1992, p. 165.4 Anderson, 1999.


effectively. So, when you speak of a symmetry in the relations between the teacher and

students I see this as primarily involving mutual respect for one another while appreciating

that the student and teacher have somewhat different roles that will evolve continuously and

recursively in the contexts of schooling. I have been impressed in almost every cogenerative

dialogue by the helpful and mature conversations involving students. I can think of only one

instance in which a student used the setting to show his contempt for teachers and teaching.

My interpretation of this student’s actions is that he endeavored to humiliate the teachers

and thereby gain the respect of a peer who was involved in the discussion.

Michael: Making supervision and evaluation a central part of an activity system rather

than an activity that comes from the outside to objectify and disenfranchise the primary

stakeholders seems to me the crucial move that our coteaching model enables. Furthermore,

when evaluation is a collective responsibility, participants are empowered to construct the

context of their activity to maximize its outcomes.

Ken: So what does this all say to the issue of assessing teacher performance? This is a

hot issue now and has been historically. Rightfully society demands well qualified teachers

who do their utmost to afford the learning of their students. Coteaching has the potential to

blur the traditional boundaries of evaluation and professional development. It seems to me

that something that is very analogous to formative evaluation occurs in coteaching when an

event arises and one of the coteaching partners participates in that event using what Dewey

has referred to as a habit, an unconscious way of enacting teaching. As events occur, and

coteachers act, they use their Spielraum to afford student learning. All coteachers experience

what happens, some consciously and others unconsciously. The direct experience of the

teaching of others can lead to the adaptation of a teacher’s teaching habitus such that when a

similar event arises in the future the teacher deals with it appropriately and without a

conscious awareness of either the event or the associated teaching. On some occasions the

actions of a coteacher will not be expected and for that reason they are noticed. These


noticed actions can then be foci for cogenerative discussions and set a context for the

building of a new teaching habitus.

Conclusions

The application of activity theory to the evaluation of teaching began with a vignette in

which a teacher was assessed by an outside evaluator. He described how the event became

staged in that the focus shifted momentarily from promoting the learning of his students to

one of ensuring that he demonstrated teaching competence. The contradictions that are made

visible from our analytic approach were manifest in this case in terms of the teacher’s stress

in dealing with them. We have shown through our examples how coteaching can set a

context for ongoing evaluation in which the focus is on teaching with the intent of

enhancing the learning of the students. The goal becomes one of learning to teach students

like these at this time and in this place. Elsewhere we have described how coteaching is an

ideal context for learning to teach (Roth & Tobin, in press). Here we have shown that

coteaching also affords evaluation of teaching in a collective sense that is analogous to

embedded formative assessment (Black & William, 1998). The evaluation associated with

coteaching can inform the praxis of all coteachers not just a new teacher. However, there is

still a need for summative evaluations of teaching. Can this teacher teach this class in these

circumstances? The certification decisions that affected the teacher in the first vignette are

going to be necessary to ensure that we get the best teachers to teach our students. So, to

what extent does our research on coteaching shape our perspectives on summative

evaluation? We hasten to say that we are not advocating a methodology that will meet every

emerging contingency. Coteaching is not offered as a master narrative that operates as a

panacea for all situations that require an evaluation of teaching. However, we do see

applications of coparticipation to summative evaluations. For example, we cannot condone

from the side “external” evaluations as legitimate practice. Instead we see advantages in

coteaching for a period of time so that first hand experiences are obtained of the teaching of


a teacher for whom a summative evaluation is needed. Then, recognizing that those who are

empowered to make such decisions need to make them, we see cogenerative discussions as

setting a context in which the voices of all stakeholder groups can discuss events and

phenomena deemed salient to the decisions that are necessary. The forum of the

cogenerative dialogue sets a context in which there is an awareness of the extent to which

teaching was viable for this class at this time.

With the proposed epistemology of teaching and learning, we expect changes in the way

teacher evaluations are undertaken. Examples of changes that are possible have been

observed in different European countries where labor process evaluation has changed from

external evaluations (often conducted by more powerful managers) to self-evaluations that

are conducted by each team of workers. The evaluations within the group involve all

members in more equitable ways. Middle managers formerly responsible for monitoring

and increasing productivity have been eliminated and some of the salary savings are

redistributed within the group among those who best scaffold learning and productivity

within the group. As a result, the workers themselves have become more productive and

have assumed control for the activities in which they are involved. In a similar way, we may

expect students and teachers to assume greater responsibility for the quality of the

processes in which they are involved. Former roles of evaluators may be abandoned in favor

of a variety of different coteachers, whose roles nevertheless remain focused on affording

student learning and improving learning environments. We can even envision that a

particular coteacher remains with a class for a number of lessons to participate in changes

that have been identified as necessary within the group.

*

Michael: When educators think about quality of teaching, they focus perhaps too much

on summative evaluation as an index of ability. We have to ask the questions, Who gains

from summative evaluation? Is summative evaluation necessary or are there other means of

assuring quality of education? Who should be involved in the evaluation process? How


should the process be structured? Do existing forms of evaluation take account of the

learning potential of the individual teacher and that of the collective? I am thinking of a

learning potential that is enhanced when teachers have opportunities to work alongside a

peer for a while. As for teaching, I cannot imagine why there should be summative

evaluation for the purpose of making decisions once an individual has been accepted into

the profession. So there may be a question of summative evaluation at the end of the formal

educational experiences at the university, which would assist potential employers to make a

decision about whether or not to hire a teacher. But then, we might ask the question why

such decisions about the competence of a teacher are not made by those concerned and in

the context for which they want to hire the individual.

Ken: Teacher evaluation is a critical component of the accountability systems being

instituted by school districts and local school boards. Schools want the best teachers for

their students and have a right to expect teachers to teach in ways that are appropriate for the

students in the context of school and district policies. What we have proposed is a

somewhat radical set of ideas that move the locus for evaluation decisions away from a

tradition of experts operating from the outside to a more inclusive process that involves

insiders engaging in coteaching and associated cogenerative dialogues. Our

recommendations do not exclude experts or deny the value of summative evaluation. We

want all stakeholders to be involved as insiders because many of the extant contradictions

are eliminated in what we propose. Having said that I do not expect that our proposal to use

coteaching and cogenerative dialogue will be feasible in all situations that might arise. We

are not suggesting a method that is good for all situations.

Michael: The potential problems residing in more traditional evaluation processes are

embodied in the following case from my own work as a department head. One of my

teachers was put on probation by our school administration that had a history of letting

teachers go at any time of the year with little notice. I asked for a chance to work with the

teacher, to integrate evaluation and professional development, and to make both part of our


collective responsibility for enhancing the learning of students in our school. The teacher

and I planned lessons together, participated in each other’s teaching, and discussed what

had happened during the shared lessons. By the end of the year, the school administration

decided that there had been sufficient growth to warrant a continuation of the teacher’s

contract. We continued to collaborate over the subsequent two years, and he became a

highly competent science teacher. If the administration had fired the teacher as intended, the

school would have lost an individual who subsequently showed and realized great learning

potential.

Ken: This is a good example of evaluation leading to an appropriate and effective form

of professional development. I do envision many situations in which schools and school

districts have to make choices of which teachers to hire and or retain. In those situations, in

which decisions must be made, there is a possibility that coteaching and cogenerative

dialogues as we have described them here, can offer a methodology that might provide data

to inform those decisions.

Michael: I also believe that in addition to the kinds of change we can envision, a change

to coteaching/cogenerative dialoguing will entail benefits (and also new constraints) that we

cannot yet foresee. I would expect, though, that some of these benefits are going to bear

similarities with the kinds of change in the industrial workplaces to which I alluded earlier.

Acknowledgments

This research was funded in part by Grant 410-99-0021 from the Social Sciences and

Humanities Research Council of Canada and by a Spencer Foundation grant.

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Table 1

Heuristics for productive cogenerative dialogue sessions

1. Respect (Between participants)2. Rapport (Between participants)3. Inclusion of stakeholders (Student teachers, students, school personnel, high

school students, university personnel)4. Ways to participate

1. Coordinating discussion2. Listening attentively3. Initiating dialogue/ideas4. Posing critical questions5. Providing evidence6. Expressing an opinion (agree/disagree)7. Speaking freely8. Clarifying and elaborating on ideas9. Suggesting alternatives for actions10. Evaluating ideas and practices

5. Opportunities to participate1. Contributing to an equitable playing field2. Listening attentively3. Making space to participate4. Showing willingness to participate5. Making invitations to participate6. Refusing all forms of oppression

6. Discussion topics1. Learning to teach2. Teaching and learning3. Curriculum4. Teaching kids like us5. Coteaching6. Transformative potential of activities/curriculum7. Links to particulars8. Quality of the learning environment

the implications of coteaching/cogenerative dialogue for teacher

Documents